Allies
by Ichigo2491
Summary: Chapter Three: A vow is made. Their bond existed long before the Games, and it will take more than the Games to break it. Cato and Clove are allies again, but it will come with a price.
1. Boy Meets Girl

**Allies **

**Chapter One: Boy Meets Girl **

_"Every now and then the stars align/_

_boy and girl meet by the grand design/_

_could it be you and me are the lucky ones?" _

_~ "The Lucky Ones" by Lana Del Rey _

Cato was showing off again.

He was the biggest of the eight year old group in the "unofficial" District Two training facility, and his size was an advantage he didn't really need. It was barely ten in the morning, and he had already bested two older boys at hand to hand fighting. Now his peers were watching him with mingled admiration and apprehension as he chucked a spear around. But when the door opened and the little girl walked in, the attention shifted to the new arrival.

She was the very picture of innocence. Her frame and features were petite and elfin. She had small but stern black brows that gave her doll-like face a startlingly intense appearance. Her dark hair was pulled into two childish braids, and constellations of freckles stood out sharply on her pale skin. Even compared to the other five year olds, she was small; built so fine and delicate that she got a few chuckles when she walked in the door.

The chuckles didn't last long.

Within an hour of her entrance, Clove had beaten every other trainee - both male and female - from the five to seven year old age group, sending several of them home in tears. The training had largely halted for the day while everyone watched this tiny, fairylike girl defeat children who had been training since she'd been in diapers.

And then she set her sights on Cato.

Even at eight, Cato was a hard person. He had coached himself to be that way. He liked to think that he didn't allow fear into his mind, but at his heart he was a coward. And when Clove turned her dark brown eyes, gleaming with a harsh pride, onto his... a slow chill ran down Cato's spine.

The attitude in the room had shifted. Everyone was whispering worriedly now, concerned for the young girl. She couldn't beat _Cato_. He was going to flatten her with blinking one blonde eyelash. Shouldn't someone get between them before things got ugly? But nobody dared to.

Cato narrowed his blue eyes as Clove circled him. She'd scared him, and fear made him angry. He would show this little girl that no one could threaten him and get away with it. He'd been watching her carefully; he'd watched her get sloppy when she had someone on their last legs. Her excitement made her careless. He could use that.

But even as he planned it, mapping out the attack in his mind, Clove moved in on him. She was fast, a lot faster than he was. She landed blows against his ribs and then ducked away before he could lash back out. Cato was slowly being filled with fury that he was being shown up by a girl who was literally half his size. He moved to strike her, but she was behind him, and gave him a hard shove that he didn't have time to brace for. He stumbled, and she tripped him, sending him sprawling hard to the floor of the training center. Then, like lighting, she was on him, pressing the tip of a knife to his throat.

The whole place was silent. Cato, winded and wounded, looked up in the eyes of the little girl who had beaten him. In the oddest way, it was like looking into a mirror. His anger slowly ebbed and flowed out of him. It was the first and last time that he ever felt any enmity for her. After a moment of looking into those madly gleeful mischievous eyes, Cato understood that what drove Clove was the same thing that drove him. He'd never felt connected with another human being before that moment, and it was a feeling he could no sooner let go of than he could stop breathing. After seeing himself in her eyes, Cato found himself unable to be angry with Clove.

It seemed like she saw the same thing, felt the same spark of recognition between them. In fact, it seemed she'd known it before he had. She gave him a secret smile that only he saw. Then she leapt gracefully back and held out one tiny hand to him. Cato was too dazed to do anything but let her pull him to his feet.

The entire training center erupted in stunned applause.

From then on, Cato and Clove were inseparable.


	2. The Reaping

**Chapter Two: The Reaping **

_"You were a child, crawling on your knees toward it/_

_making mama so proud/_

_but your voice was too loud." _

_- Kids by MGMT _

The first lesson that Clove taught them all was not to underestimate her, and it was a lesson that nobody ever forgot, least of all Cato. He lived in perpetual, respectful awe of her. And yet he always felt a strange, incongruous urge to protect her (he never told her that, because she would have been furious). And she adored him fiercely, though she never spoke the words.

They had one important thing in common: losing had never been an option for either of them.

"Can't you see, Cato," Clove was fond of saying. "We were born for this. We're going to be victors one day, both of us. I can't wait to get in that arena. I can't _wait_to volunteer." She had that rapacious gleam in her eyes, the one that never failed to raise a sympathetic hunger in Cato's blood.

Cato couldn't wait for the Hunger Games either.

It was an honor that they had been training for their whole lives (rules to the contrary be damned). Cato was the only child in his family, and Clove was the only strong one out of her sickly batch of siblings. Their families were depending on them for honor and pride and glory, and the children were only too eager for victory.

Neither Cato nor Clove could imagine any other future than winning the Games.

* * *

Reapings weren't really reapings in District 2. There were so many volunteers that it complicated things. You could volunteer, but that didn't mean you would get to go into the arena. Cato had been volunteering since he was twelve, but so had a lot of other kids. It was always an older boy with a louder voice who was beckoned onto the stage.

_Not this year,_ Cato thought grimly. _This is my year._

All the odds were in his favor. His name was in the pot an absurd number of times, even if he hadn't intended to volunteer. He was the best of the best, and he knew it. He had been showered with praise and attention from potential sponsors for years. He was bigger and stronger and meaner now than he had ever been. He was eighteen. He had only one year left. One more chance. One more shot at honor and glory and triumph. Winning the Games, as he had dreamed of doing all his life, would fill the gaping emptiness he had carried inside him almost as long. It was his destiny. And tomorrow, his destiny would be decided.

He'd made it clear, in very graphic terms, what he would do to anyone who tried to challenge him for a place in the arena.

The one thing he didn't like to think about was the fact that he would have to be away from Clove for an undetermined amount of time. But he wasn't that worried about her. She'd keep herself busy. She would watch every second of the Games, would cheer him on and be waiting to give him a hero's welcome at the end. And she would be imagining the day she would join him in the esteemed ranks of victors. Like him, she might have to wait until she was eighteen. But she _would_ be going into the arena. There was no doubt about it. Everyone had seen her skill. They had to have witnessed the fire that blazed in her eyes whenever she was on the hunt. They had seen her defeat _him_ in sparring. That ought to have been the deciding factor. And they had to see how much she wanted it... she was the only one who wanted it as badly as he did. He and Clove had that in common: they always got what they wanted.

_They'll make her wait, though,_ Cato thought. _At least one more year._

They'd talked about it last night, the way they had talked about everything since the day she knocked him on his ass ten years ago.

"You're going for sure this year, Cato," Clove said comfortingly, as they sat on the roof of her house and looked out over the sparkling lights of the city. "I have no doubt in my mind at all. They'd be crazy to let anyone else go. They've been courting you for years, and you know they've never paid this much attention to anyone before. You're special, they see it. They've just been saving you for when you're at your biggest and strongest. And you're going to win for sure." She squeezed his hands, her eyes glowing fiercely with pride in things he hadn't accomplished yet. She had more faith in him than anyone.

He squeezed back, grinning. "You're right," he said confidently. "What about you, Clo? Are you going to force your way into the ring this year?"

Her answering grin had all its usual fierceness, but also a tinge of something like regret. It vanished quickly though. "I guess I can wait just one more year."

The implications of what she was saying took a while to sink in. Cato had many skills, but instant comprehension wasn't one of them.

"You're afraid of being in the Games with me," he said.

Her answering snarl was far too quick. "Who says anything about being afraid?" She jerked her small hands out of his large ones. Cato had no illusions about those dainty hands. He knew how quickly she could kill with them, and how much she would relish doing so. It was one of the things he admired so much about her.

She stood up and stalked to the edge of the roof. He didn't get up and follow her because he knew her well enough to know that she would kick him in a vital place, and he wanted to save all his energy for the coming days of intense training.

"It'll never happen," he said. "Not in a million years."

"You say that, but really you have no way of knowing." Was that a tremor in her voice or was he imagining things?

"Of course I know what I'm talking about!" he snapped. "There will be plenty of volunteers. Even if they pull your name this year, you won't have to go."

She turned back to him, her loose hair flowing in the sudden breeze, her eyes snapping fire. "I'm _not_ afraid," she growled. "Just wanted to make that totally clear."

"I know," Cato agreed. A grin tilted the corners of his hard lips. "What is there to be afraid of? We're the best."

That was something they could both agree on.

* * *

Cato was on edge all throughout the opening. He kept unconsciously flexing his muscles as he waited for all the patriotic rambling to just be _over_, already. When was it going to be his moment? Clove caught his eye and gave him a smile that made him stand taller and stop twitching. The odds were in his favor, and it was all going to be fine.

They were digging around in the bowl now, selecting the female tribute. _My ally,_Cato thought. His heart began to pick up speed. It was all becoming real now, wasn't it? It was really going to happen.

But they called Clove's name, and Cato's racing heart stuttered.

It started up again when he reminded himself that she wasn't going this year. One of the older girls was going to raise her voice and volunteer. He and Clove would have a good laugh over this when she came to the justice building to see him off.

But no one was volunteering. Clove had a face of stone, revealing nothing, and she was walking to the stage. She wasn't hesitating.

Why wasn't anyone volunteering?

_They're too afraid, _he realized. _They know how much she wants it, and no one wants to stand in her way._

He didn't have time to think about any of it, because they were digging around in the other bowl now, and the force of thirteen years of training and dreaming and fighting and yearning were behind him, and he was stepping forward, he was raising his voice, he was volunteering, and his clenched fists and narrowed eyes were offering a free slice of death to whoever stood in his way. He was an unstoppable force now. It was all happening. He'd come too far for it to be any other way.

Now he was on the stage, with no memory of having gotten there. Now he was facing the crowd, and he couldn't even see them. The moment he'd been dreaming of since he could walk, and he was barely even present in it. He felt like he was floating somewhere above them all... but he also felt heavy as lead.

"Tributes, shake hands," the announcer was saying.

Cato wasn't aware of turning, but he suddenly felt the weight of Clove at his side. He looked down at her, and her eyes blazed up at him, and for the first time since they were kids, he had no idea what she was thinking or feeling.

She held out her hand. He took it as tentatively as if it was a knife, and a few moments later, he did something he'd never done, and let go before she did.

Standing together on the stage, in front of the world, and under the applause of District Two, Cato could feel Clove slipping away from him.


	3. The Vow

**Chapter Three: The Vow**

_"We lie beneath the stars at night_  
_Our hands gripping each other tight_  
_You keep my secrets hope to die_  
_Promises, swear them to the sky." _

_- "Young Blood" by The Naked and Famous_

* * *

Saying goodbye was both easier and harder than Cato had expected.

He was still moving in a kind of a haze. His father stood tall and clapped him on the shoulder, his broad face blank and hard as always. Cato could still see that face as it had been when he was a little kid, urging him to train harder, fight harder, not to stop for the bruises and cuts, just to fight on. His mother embraced him, and she seemed smaller than the last time she had done so. Cato towered over his mother now. "I'm very proud of you," she said in his ear, and he felt his heart again for the first time since the stage. Cato wasn't particularly close to them, but they were his parents, and they were familiar, and it was going to be strange to be away from them. But it was all going to be worth it...

... wasn't it?

His thoughts strayed disobediently to Clove.

She _was_ close to her family. Her mother and father doted on her, and her brother and sisters worshipped the ground she walked on. He wondered if she would cry. He wondered if she would let him see how she felt, if she would let him, just _once_, tell her that it was going to be okay. He wondered these things from a distant place that seemed outside his own head.

And then before he knew it, they were on the train, accompanied by their intimidating mentors, Brutus and Enobaria. Brutus was massive, looming several inches above even Cato, and Enobaria had sharp gold teeth that she flashed often in a menacing smile. Cato was too intimidated and impressed by them to think of anything to say.

Clove did not let Cato see her cry, but then, he had never really expected her to. She didn't look like she even knew what tears were. Her face could have been carved from marble.

Cato and Clove didn't speak to each other on the way to the Capitol. Not a single word passed between them, though they would answer Brutus and Enobaria's questions in a monotone. Their Capitol escort, a man named Silvius, had green hair and green skin. Cato thought Silvius looked like a weed, and he wanted to joke about him with Clove, but he knew better than to try. There was an unspoken rule between them now. Each of them seemed to be trying to pretend that the other wasn't there, or was a stranger. It would have made things so much less... complicated.

* * *

The first day day in the Capitol passed in a blur. Consultations with the mentors and sessions with the stylists.. it was all part of the package, all part of the dream. The attention was very nice, and no less than he deserved. Being fawned over, dressed up, waved at and cheered for ... it was everything Cato had hoped and dreamed it would be. He had told himself he wouldn't allow anything to mar his triumph, and so far he was doing a pretty good job of pretending nothing was. All he had to do was not look at Clove.

As long as he couldn't see her, he could pretend she wasn't there.

As long as she wasn't there, everything was fine.

But then they had to get in that chariot together. Alone. Cato was brooding the entire time. That was all right. The stylists had encouraged him to brood, saying it suited him. But it did not suit him not to have Clove on his side, he thought. The cheers of the spectators, the sight of the other tributes, some more pathetic than others ... these were things he needed to talk to Clove about, if they were to be real, to be savored. But to talk to her would have been to acknowledge that she was here.

In his way.

In danger.

He continued to ignore her, and she him, all the way back to their rooms.

Cato had not cried in years. Tears were for weaklings. But as he lay there wakeful in an unfamiliar bed, tears hovered close to the surface, and he was dangerously close to being a weakling.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight against the hateful sensation. But while his eyes were closed, his bedroom door swung open, and a warm weight settled on his bed. When he opened his eyes, Clove was lying there beside him, her brown eyes gleaming in the faint moonlight coming though the single window and softening the expression on her face.

Cato sat up abruptly, looking down at her, his heart thudding, wondering what she would do, what she would say.

Clove pulled something from her pocket. "I never got a chance to give you your token," she said, her voice strong and clear. She took his hand, opened it, and pressed something into his palm... a lock of the same dark hair that was even now spread out against the white of the pillow.

The tears had dried up, but his eyes still stung. "Clove, I..."

She placed a hand over his mouth, which was just as well, because he had no idea what to say anyway. "We knew this might happen. It is what it is."

_But I don't want it to be this way, _Cato thought. He'd played through thousands of Games in his mind, but none of them had involved Clove as a variable. In these past few wakeful hours, he'd been unable to stop himself from adding her in, and he'd come to the same conclusion that she had probably reached years ago, when the Games had been nothing but a distant dream.

"It's going to come down to the two of us," Cato said glumly. There was a lump in his throat that made it hard to speak.

Clove nodded as stiffly and unquestioningly as a soldier taking orders. "Obviously. We're going to be the last ones standing. You're the best, I'm the best. You'd never let anything hurt me, and I'd never let anything hurt you."

Hearing her say it so matter-of-factly made the lump in Cato's throat grow larger. "What are we going to do, Clove?"

She looked at him, her wide eyes shiny, but her voice hard and steady. "There can only be one victor. Those are the rules."

_Rules._ Rules, taking the person he cares most about in the world away from him, and there was absolutely nothing that he could do about it. He would die or she would die. He couldn't decide which option made him feel sicker. Either way, he would lose her. He would not get to keep this girl.

Cato's heart beat faster as he thought of all the horrible ways that there would be to die in the arena. He knew that he would have no trouble dispatching the other tributes in whatever manner necessary. They were obstacles and they had to be eliminated. He had always known that. He knew that Clove felt the same. way.

But Clove was _Clove_.

She deserved so much better than the undignified, demeaning death she would suffer at the hands of a tribute who did not see her the way Cato saw her. She deserved to die with dignity, honor... at the hands of someone who loved her.

One look into her eyes and he knew that she was thinking the same thing about him.

"We should make a promise," she murmured, her eyes never leaving his. "No one kills you but me."

"I think you mean, nobody _kills_ you but _me_," Cato added. It was a poor, dark attempt at a joke, to his surprise, Clove laughed.

Then she reached out across the narrow space between them, and took Cato's hands in hers. He felt a tremor running through her, but he wouldn't dream of mentioning it, especially since he was trembling too.

"Repeat after me," she whispered. "I, Clove, most solemnly vow..."

"I, Clove, most solemnly vow..."

"Your own name, idiot!" Clove hissed, and for a second the two of them laughed and leached some of the solemnity from the moment. Then Clove dug her fingernails into the back of Cato's hands and the flicker of pain brought him back under control.

"I, Cato, most solemnly vow..."

"to stand by Cato throughout the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, to be his ally, to help him and protect him from all harm..."

"to stand by Clove throughout the seventy-fourth Hunger Games, to be her ally, to help her and protect her from all harm..."

Clove squeezed Cato's hands and continued on. "... until such time as all other tributes are dead..."

"... until such time as all other tributes are dead..."

"... at which time Cato and I will fight each other...

"... at which time ... Clove and I will fight each other..."

"... to decide the victor of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games."

"... to decide the victor of the seventy-fourth Hunger Games."

Clove's voice grew stronger instead of fainter as she went on. It almost seemed to be ringing throughout the room. "Should I defeat him, I vow that Cato will die with honor and dignity, that I will accept the crown for both of us, that I will take care of his family, and honor his memory in my heart, for the rest of my days." Her eyes glowed with the fierce tenderness of her vow. It took Cato a moment to remember that he had to promise too.

"Should I defeat her, I vow that Clove will... die... with honor and dignity, that I will accept the crown for both of us, that I will take care of her family, and honor her memory in my heart... for the rest of my days."

The quiet that fell between them was almost peaceful, and rolled on for long minutes. It was strange that the turmoil inside Cato had ceased once he made that vow. Having just sworn to kill Clove, Cato had never felt closer to her. And it seemed she felt the same, if the way she suddenly curled up next to him meant anything.

Words weren't necessary. She rested her head against his chest, and he gingerly slipped an arm around her shoulder. She was very warm, and very soft, and would have been very angry if she knew that Cato had thought of the word "soft" in connection with her.

"Go to sleep," Clove ordered. "We need our rest. Training starts tomorrow."

"And I'm going to kick your ass," Cato said sleepily.

Clove elbowed him sharply in the ribs, and a small scuffle ensued. It didn't last long, and Cato lost as usual. The two tributes fell asleep curled together. In spite of the vow they had just made, or rather maybe because of it, they were one.


End file.
